Chowser 🧭

A lightweight macOS browser chooser with profiles support, smart routing, and rule portability. Intercept links anywhere and open them in the right browser, every time.

🌐 chowser.sreerams.in — Landing page with setup guide & AI-powered configuration

How It Works

1. Set Chowser as your default browser
2. Click any link in any app
3. A sleek picker appears — choose your browser
4. The link opens, Chowser disappears

Chowser lives in your menu bar and uses zero resources when idle.

Features

• Browser Picker — Choose from your configured browsers with a single click
• Keyboard Shortcuts — Press 1 through 9, type a browser initial, or use ↑/↓ + Return for instant selection
• Browser Profiles — Full support for Chrome, Brave, Edge, Vivaldi, Arc, Dia, Firefox, Zen, LibreWolf, and Waterfox profiles
• Advanced Routing Rules — Auto-open matching domains/paths (wildcard support) in a specific browser, bypassing the picker
• Focus Mode (Temporary Default) — Route all links to a specific browser for 1 Hour or Until Tomorrow from the menu bar
• URL Unshortening — Automatically strips tracking parameters and resolves shortlinks before routing. Press H to manually resolve unknown shortlinks
• Private / Incognito Mode — Open any link in private mode via keyboard shortcut (P) or per-rule toggle
• App-Based Routing — Route links based on the source app that opened them (e.g., Slack links → Chrome Work)
• Quick Rule Creation — Press R in the picker to instantly build a routing rule
• Domain Frequency Tracking — Suggests auto-routing rules after you repeatedly open a domain in the same browser
• Clipboard URL — Open URLs from your clipboard via the menu bar
• Rule Portability — Import/Export both browser configs and routing rules as JSON
• Hidden Apps — Hide non-browser apps that register as web handlers
• Menu Bar App — Runs silently in the background, no Dock icon
• Launch at Login — Start automatically when you log in

Installation

Mac App Store

Download from the Mac App Store

Build from Source

Requirements: Xcode 15+ and macOS 14+

git clone https://github.com/bsreeram08/chowser.git
cd chowser
open Chowser.xcodeproj

Then in Xcode:

1. Select the Chowser scheme and My Mac as the destination
2. Press Cmd+R to build and run
3. The app will appear in your menu bar

Or build from the command line:

xcodebuild -project Chowser.xcodeproj \
  -scheme Chowser \
  -configuration Release \
  -derivedDataPath build \
  CODE_SIGNING_ALLOWED=NO

# App is at build/Build/Products/Release/Chowser.app
open build/Build/Products/Release/Chowser.app

Note: Builds from source run without sandbox restrictions, enabling full browser profile support.

Testing

# Unit tests
xcodebuild test -project Chowser.xcodeproj -scheme Chowser -destination 'platform=macOS' -only-testing:ChowserTests

# UI end-to-end tests
xcodebuild test -project Chowser.xcodeproj -scheme ChowserUITests -destination 'platform=macOS'

Tech Stack

• SwiftUI — Native macOS UI
• AppKit — Menu bar integration, browser launching
• ServiceManagement — Launch at Login

License

MIT — see LICENSE for details.